Celebrate St. Patrick's Day with parade, events

Thursday

Mar 14, 2019 at 3:26 PMMar 14, 2019 at 3:27 PM

Winter will eventually come to an end. Summer is coming. And one of the first indications? St. Patrick's Day.

"Our goal is basically ... to get out of our long winter, have something to celebrate," said Sherry Martens, St. Patrick’s Day celebration coordinator. "I incorporate my personal village of volunteers. We just use it as a day of fun and celebration."

In Holland, the celebration is centered around a parade, and this year, it takes place Saturday, March 16. St. Patrick's Day is March 17. As always, parade-goers may bring donations for Community Action House. Donations of nonperishable food items may be brought to the Civic Center before the parade begins or New Holland Brewing afterward.

"The committee just feels better to have some sort of attachment to the community to keep driving the area needs," Martens said. "We keep celebrating, but we’re also purposeful."

The parade begins at noon, but that's not when the events start. A scavenger hunt will take place 11 a.m.-noon at New Holland Brewing. Pick up sheets with a list of pots of gold to find at New Holland Brewing. Search for the pots around Holland, and when the group has found as many as they can within that hour, bring back the completed form to New Holland. The group who finds the most pots wins — or the group who finds them all first. Winner gets a basket of goodies.

"The winner will win their own pot of gold, which usually encompasses gift cards from downtown locations," Martens said. "We’ll also get to give a check in their name to Community Action House for $500."

This is the 15th year for the annual parade. It will move down Eighth Street, starting at the Civic Center in downtown Holland and ending at Big E's. Parade organizers try to make it bigger and better each year.

"We have been as a committee trying to challenge ourselves to go green, literally," Martens said. So where they once had balloons, they now have flags. They are making it a priority to be as "green" as possibly in every way.

"My hope is that eventually this parade will be just a beautiful sea of costumes, flags, interesting things," Martens said.

The parade will include many local entries, and the parade organizers have many entries as well. The town crier will be in the parade, and someone in a St. Patrick costume. Along with that, many other volunteers will be dressed up in colorful costumes to go with the theme. As always, there will be flags from each county in Ireland. And a giant snake puppet will be walked down Eighth Street, as well. New this year, dozens of volunteers also will carry smaller snakes along the route.

"It really is a beautiful parade," Martens said. "Short, sweet, and hopefully fun." The parade is about a half-hour long.

Curragh, New Holland Brewing and Big E's will have music groups perform throughout the day. Curragh will have bands playing until midnight Saturday and then performing Sunday. Curragh, Holland Irish pub, also will serve breakfast Saturday.

"You can definitely make an afternoon out of it," Martens said.

"We’re an Irish pub, and we want to promote being Irish and being part of a special celebration, and extending that out into the community is really important," said Sophia Leongas, owner of the Curragh and a member of the organizing committee for the parade.

Organizers say celebrating St. Patrick's Day is one way to be a multicultural city.

"Everybody’s so open to celebrating the different cultures that we have," Martens said.

"There’s a little bit of the history there for people to learn about," Leongas added. "It’s mostly to celebrate that spring is coming."

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